23 Dec Codemonkey – teaching real coding

CodeMonkey is an online game that teaches both the fundamentals and advanced topics in computer programming.

Use coding skills to program a monkey to grab bananas and ride the turtle without falling into the river!

In CodeMonkey students program an adorable monkey to get all its bananas back from the bad gorilla who stole them. As they progress in the game, students will meet different friends like the trusty turtle, who will help them in their journey as they face more complex challenges to solve. Each solution is checked and graded automatically, giving learners instant “stars score” feedback.

The programming language used in CodeMonkey is called CoffeeScript. It’s a language that compiles to JavaScript, and similarly to JavaScript it is used in the industry primarily for web applications. The creators chose this language for a few reasons, but mainly because of its friendly syntax, which resembles the way to write in English, compared to other programming languages.

The software is not free, there are home (4 usd/month) and school versions (from 129 USD/year). The curriculum has 32 lesson plans, each 45 minutes long, plus 3 workshops for creating CodeMonkey challenges using our Challenge Builder. The lessons are constructed of three parts, introduction, play time on CodeMonkey, and revision. The curriculum accompanies teaching process step by step, and is written so that even if the teacher don’t have previous experience with Computer Science, their will be able to teach by simply following the instructions.

CodeMonkey is suitable for children from the age of 9 and up, although their also have younger users. The software is available in 18 languages.